Overview
In this assignment you’ll design a new multi-story building of a much larger scale – a commercial office building in an urban area. The focus of this assignment is on:
- Learning to explore and develop a design using performance feedback using the Autodesk Forma web tool.
- Using the conceptual model that you create in Forma to quickly model the essential features of the building shell in Revit.
The point of this assignment is to quickly generate and explore design ideas — keeping in mind the program requirements.
Autodesk Forma and Revit conceptual masses are two great tools for quickly exploring design ideas. And this assignment will give you the chance to experiment with how to create a design using them to inform your design decisions.
You’ll complete this assignment in three parts:
- Part I - Creating Massing with Meaning using Autodesk Forma
- Part II - Converting Masses to Building Elements using Revit
- Part III - Sharing Your Proposed Design
Getting Started
You can use this Revit project as a starting point file for this assignment:
Or, if you prefer, you can use one of Revit’s template files. Of those, the Commercial template is probably the best starting point to use.
Design Approach
For larger scale buildings, we often begin the design process by exploring very high-level design decisions (including the overall shape and orientation of the proposed building) by looking at options for how the program requirements for creating a needed amount of space can be addressed within the constraints and taking advantage of the unique opportunities available on the project site.
You can think of this approach as top-down or outside-in. Either way, the point is to make informed choices about the big, impactful design decisions early on – saving decisions about the smaller design details for a later iteration/design phase.
New tools are available that help us analyze and compare many aspects of potential design options to inform our design decisions, and we’ll be using one of them — Autodesk Forma — to help design several options for a specific site and choose the “best” option to move forward with based on the analysis feedback.
Background
Your client – the fast-rising social media company TwitBook – has asked you to propose a design for a new commercial office building or a campus of smaller buildings to meet the needs of their employees and of their expanding business. To enhance the creativity of their young workforce, they’re looking for a very dynamic, fluid series of workspaces that will encourage informal meetings, spontaneous collaboration, and employee well-being.
TwitBook has asked you to create a space that’s a bit different and more daring than the somewhat classical design of most office buildings. This project should be a landmark building that clearly reflects their forward-thinking vision and the cutting-edge work that their employees are doing.
Design Program
Your task is to come up with a proposed design for this new office building or campus.
Your design should include approximately 220,000 to 250,000 SF of useable floor area.
Although you won’t be designing the interior spaces in detail for this assignment, you can imagine that they would include:
- Workspaces -- a mix of walled offices, cubicles, and open workspaces.
- Lots of meetings rooms and informal collaboration / project spaces
- A welcoming lobby space for clients and guests with many conference rooms nearby for meetings and seminars
- Cafe spaces where employees can get some food or coffee right in the building.
- Informal kitchenette / lounge spaces strategically placed near work areas
- Other amenities to support employee wellness
- Gym / workout areas
- Locker room space for bikers and runners
- A day care center
- Open exterior spaces -- for example, terraces and patios -- to take advantage of the favorable natural environment and boost employee productivity
In addition to these programmed spaces, you’ll also need to provide space for the building infrastructure and utilities to support the building users. These spaces typically add about 20-25% to the total building area (bringing your total floor area up to around 264,000 - 312,000 SF).
What’s Expected
Part I — Creating Massing with Meaning using Autodesk Forma
Part II — Converting Masses to Building Elements using Revit
Part III — Sharing Your Proposed Design
Sharing Your Project
Please follow the instructions in the Canvas assignment to upload your building model to your folder on Autodesk Construction Cloud Documents and create a new post sharing your project on this linked Notion page.
Points to Ponder / Wrap-Up Questions
Please choose 2 of the following Points to Ponder questions and share your comments on this linked Notion page.